Why is it difficult for Russians to learn English. Why learning English is easier than Russian

First, let's determine which languages ​​are popular today.

Of course, English, which is unanimously considered the language of international communication.

Then Spanish, because it is spoken not only in Spain, but also in most countries of South America, it is also one of the official languages ​​of the United States.

You can't forget about French, and not only because it is, on an equal footing with English, the official language of Canada, as well as the main language of many African countries, but also because this beautiful and melodic language has many fans who study it just like that, “out of love for art."

Deutsch, despite the limited area of ​​\u200b\u200bapplication (officially - Germany and Austria), still does not lose ground and has a huge army of students or masters of it, apparently due to the fact that Germany has had a huge historical and cultural impact on other countries, and continues to flourish in economic and political terms.

Let's not forget about our own in Russian, after all, it is spoken not only in the largest country in the world, but also in the former Soviet republics, as well as emigrants who have left this very country and republics in all other developed countries. Let's include it in our list also in order to compare its complexity with other popular languages.

And now let's face it and admit that in fact, the first on this list should be Chinese, which is statistically the most widely spoken language in the world, because it is spoken by 1.213 billion people, and this is a lot.

At first, we wanted to be fair to add the national language of India to our list - Hindi, which takes an honorable 3rd place in the list of the most common languages, after Chinese and English. But, unfortunately, it is of little interest to anyone outside of Hindustan. This situation has developed due to the active role of the English language, which in the nineteenth century became in India lingua franca- the language of interethnic communication. That is, in India you can freely communicate in English, and you will always be understood.

Therefore, we will include in our analysis Arabic language, which is spoken in many countries in the Middle East, North Africa, South and Central America.

So let's start with the complexity analysis. English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. We will make a reservation right away that we will analyze them from the perspective of a Russian-speaking person, and we will take into account the data on the Russian language itself from the perspective of foreigners studying it.

1. The simplest of these is... English language! There are no genders, cases, word agreement in it, its grammar is quite simple. The words in it are short, as a rule, the verb and the noun are denoted by the same word, verbs acquire a suffix only in the third person. Native speakers are comfortable with the mistakes of foreigners, because so many people learn English as a second language. It is in English that 80% of the world's information is now stored, the bulk of technical and scientific literature is also printed in it, in addition, English is considered the language of the Internet.
For those who are just starting to learn English, it is important to understand that it is a language of structures, a language with a fixed word order. You just need to remember that the structure of each sentence is the same: "subject + predicate + minor members", and in that order. It should also be remembered that in every sentence there must be verb. Well articles of course - it is they who cause the greatest difficulties for Russian speakers. In general, English can be learned quite quickly for everyday communication, but to master it masterfully ... more than one year is needed. As they say, English is easy to learn, but hard to master.

Read more about English.

2. Second place can be Spanish. His vocabulary is similar to English, since they have a common root - Latin. His spelling is simple - as it is written, so it is heard. The word order here is not as rigidly fixed as in English, auxiliary verbs are not needed. In addition, this language is brighter, richer and more interesting in terms of word formation - for example, diminutive suffixes are actively used (which English simply does not have). Tenses on the same level of complexity as in English, but a little confused in the past. In general, for a Russian person, Spanish is easily perceived by ear, much easier than English, this is due to similar phonetics. Read more about Spanish.

3. French is also not very complicated, many of his words are similar to English and Russian, which is historically conditioned. French is widely used, it is quite easy to find opportunities to learn and speak it.
The most difficult thing in French is pronunciation and reading. It is difficult to get used to the fact that several letters in a word may not be read at all, and those that are read may not be pronounced the way they are written. In addition, the pronunciation features of abbreviated forms are related and studied in parallel with the main grammar.
What about grammar? Verbs are conjugated according to faces (there is both you and you) in different tenses and moods. In the traditional system of grammar, there are: 3 present tenses, 3 future tenses, 6 past tenses, 2 types of imperative mood, 2 types of conditional mood and 4 types of subjunctive mood. Also, French is distinguished by the abundant use of negative and restrictive phrases and the frequent use of the infinitive as a subject.

Despite the seeming complexity, the French language has many fans, even fans, and learning it is actually not so difficult. You can read more about French.

4. If you like long words and capitalized nouns - your language Deutsch. German is easier for people with a technical mindset, it is rather schematic and predictable, its sentences are like an electrical circuit, where each subsequent link is connected to the previous one. And it also looks like a sprawling tree with many branches - rules and exceptions to them. You definitely can’t call it a poor or boring language!
German is difficult in its grammar, it has 4 cases and three genders of nouns, of course, in no way connected with the real qualities of the objects they denote (all articles are declined). According to Mark Twain, “In German, a girl is genderless, although, say, a turnip has it.”
The German language also has a rather complex syntax, and the words in it are very long, because. are formed by combining different words and adding suffixes and prefixes to them.

Despite the fact that it is considered a rough language in terms of sound, many people hear its lyricism and see its ornamental beauty. Although, we admit honestly: teaching him is not an easy task. As said Richard Porson, Life is too short to learn German. But, of course, this is an exaggeration. Read more about the German language.

5. Russian It is certainly a rather difficult language. Even the Russians themselves have to learn it all their lives, and at school only a few have an “excellent” mark on it. Russian has 6 cases, while German has only 4, in general its grammar is very confusing, with many exceptions, exceptions to exceptions; word order is not fixed, there are no articles, and the meaning is often conveyed by intonation.
Punctuation in Russian is rather confusing, but logical, but contains many rules.
It is difficult for foreigners to perceive Russian by ear because of the excellent phonetics - a large number of hissing and whistling sounds and a rolling “r”. Most people in the world consider Russian to be even more difficult than Chinese. Many people quit learning the "tourist set" immediately after they try to pronounce "Hello" - Hello. Combination "healthy" and "vstv" in one word is unpronounceable for most people.
Russian is a very emotional language. Its lexical content is rich and plastic - indeed, in no other language you will find so many diminutives and abusive words! For example: girl - girl - girl - girl - girl - girl - girl, and all these are derivatives of the same root. Compare English: girl - littlegirl, and that's it!
Much in Russian is not subject to logical comprehension, as it conveys mood, emotion.
For example:
- Do you want tea?
- No, probably.

So think, foreigners, whether we want tea or not.

6. Arabic language no one will call it easy, but let's see how difficult it is. The first thing a beginner encounters and what scares him is Arabic writing, Arabic script. However, the fear of the Arabic script is false, since it has only 28 letters that connect with each other in print and writing. However, many letters have four different spellings, depending on their position in the word. Another difficulty (although in fact just a lack of habit) is the direction of writing from right to left. But the stresses in Arabic words are placed very simply and logically without any exceptions.
So what's so hard about it, you ask? Firstly, the pronunciation of Arabic sounds corresponding to a particular letter is rather difficult for both Slavs and Europeans. This mainly concerns the reading of vowels, since it is believed that they are not there, but there are "vocalization". Arabic has 28 consonants and only 3 vowels - a, i, u- each of them can be short or long. But vowels are not reflected in the letter. In addition, there are sounds there that do not have an equivalent in Russian. At the same time, words are read the same way they are written.
The grammar of Arabic is also not encouraging - the verb usually comes before the predicate and the object. The verb has three numbers, so nouns and verbs must be learned in singular, dual and plural. The present tense has 13 forms. The noun has three cases and two genders.
It is also necessary to take into account the fact that the Arabic language is the language of a completely different culture (for Russian speakers). Studying any European language, we will meet a lot of words that are familiar to us. And when studying Arabic, we will no longer come across a single familiar word.

Another problem of the Arabic language is that there are many dialects in it. Classical Arabic - the language of the Koran - was originally a dialect of Mecca (the territory of Saudi Arabia), and its adapted form, which is called "Modern Standard Arabic", is now used in literature, newspapers, television and radio, in the mosque, as well as in the communication of educated people. Arabs from different countries. But the differences between local dialects are sometimes so huge that a representative of Morocco, for example, may not be understood by an Iraqi, and vice versa, although both formally speak Arabic.

7. There is an opinion that Chinese not at all that complicated. In fact, only its grammar is simple and even primitive - there are no endings, no suffixes, no prefixes.
What makes Chinese really difficult is the mass of synonyms and the terrible interchangeability of words, as well as the actual characters. Many hieroglyphs are often synonyms, and the synonyms themselves require the study of more and more hieroglyphs, while often completely different words are read identically.

At the same time, there are no particular problems when reading hieroglyphics, they arise in oral speech, when the brain has to deal with a mass of associations and similar-sounding words. Therefore, the Chinese themselves speak in short phrases, sometimes repeating everything said anew. And for a native speaker of the Slavic group, even just saying one Chinese sentence with the correct, understandable pronunciation is already a great achievement, for which you need to work and work.
As for the simplicity of Chinese grammar, it is more than covered not only by complex writing, but also by an extremely complex pronunciation with 4 tones, extensive homonymy, homophony, homography. Thus, Chinese is in last place on our list, and you can read more about it.

So, we have considered 7 popular languages ​​today and arranged them according to the degree of complexity. But which language will be easier or more difficult for you is a separate issue that depends on many factors. If, for example, you already taught English at school, like most Russians, then it will be easier for you to learn related languages ​​- German, Spanish, French.

if you have strong motivation, for example, the intention to move to another country (read about emigration), then of course the language you are learning will be easier for you - your emotional mood, interest in the life of the country, the press, television, the desire to watch films and TV programs in the language will affect.

Is it easy to learn English? Usually this question is asked by those who only think about how important it is to master a foreign speech. There are two answers to this question at once: yes, it is easy and no, it is very difficult. It all depends on the person and motivation, how the chosen method of teaching English is suitable for a particular student, and whether enough time is devoted to classes. However, there are general principles that allow us to classify learning English as simple or complex tasks.

Why lightweight?

English can definitely be called easy compared to other languages, and here's why.

1. It is the most common on the globe, as it is considered the simplest and most logical in terms of grammar among the languages ​​of Europe.

2. Habitual writing of letters. The entire language is based on 26 characters, while Chinese has over 80,000 characters, some with 30 strokes.

3. There are a lot of borrowed words in Russian. Even a beginner in training knows more than one hundred. For example, business, office, football, basketball, jeans, soundtrack and others.

4. Adjectives used together with numerals do not decline for cases, numbers and genders.

5. Nouns can be singular or plural, but they are declined in only two cases.

Why complex?

Like any other foreign language, English takes time. You cannot learn it in 3 months and reach a professional level. This period will not be enough even to understand the basics of grammar.

The following factors can also be attributed to the difficulties.

1. A large number of tenses compared to Russian: the main 3, but each of them has 4 aspects, plus a passive voice. As a result, more than 20 are obtained, while in the native there are only 3.

2. Articles. There are few of them, but since they are generally absent in Russian, it is quite difficult to understand why they are needed and when they are used.

3. Management of verbs. These parts of speech in English are used with various prepositions that have different meanings.

4. Complicated grammar and the presence of many paradoxes.

The difficulties described are the most common, but there are others: someone cannot accurately reproduce some sounds, and someone does not remember the spelling of certain words well. However, as practice shows, the most difficult thing is the development of discipline and a responsible approach while teaching English.

Make a firm decision, start with the simplest and methodically move forward towards your goal, and after a year of hard work, answer yourself the question: is it easy for you to learn English?

Learning English, like any foreign language, comes with a number of challenges. Where do these difficulties come from and can they be overcome? This vital issue for any person learning English will be discussed.

Reason one: differences in mentality. It is obvious that the pictures of the world of a Russian person and an Englishman are very different. Accordingly, the language as one of the embodiments of the national worldview is mastered along with new outlooks on life, which can be quite useful, but requires additional efforts. Differences in linguistic pictures of the world are especially visible in folk wisdom - proverbs and sayings, which quite often cannot be adequately translated. For example:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating- To know what a pudding is, you have to taste it (literal translation).

Reason two: differences in the articulation base. When setting up pronunciation, a good teacher will certainly pay attention to those sounds that are not typical for the Russian language. It is their development that should be given time. For example, English [r], which is pronounced differently than Russian [r]. Another stumbling block is interdental sounds, which many Russian speakers, especially adults, are simply embarrassed to pronounce.

Reason three: different grammatical systems. English differs from Russian in the absence of a developed case system. However, this is offset by numerous aspects and tenses of the verb. English is strong with a verb, the forms of which Russian speakers have to learn for a long time, since often there are no similar differences in our native language. For example, a Russian sentence:
I wrote a letter
Can be translated in three ways if there is no context
I've written the letter. or
I wrote the letter. or
I had written the letter.
And the more exercises you do on the use and comparison of temporary forms, the stronger your knowledge will be.

Reason four: syntactic differences. In Russian, such wonderful phrases as “Evening” are possible. Unlike Russian rules for constructing sentences, English syntax does not allow such pearls, but requires the obligatory presence of a subject and a predicate.

So our “Evening” in English will be “Night was falling”. Particular attention is required to the word order in the interrogative sentence and the use of auxiliary verbs.
These are the main difficulties that prevent native Russian speakers from learning English. Now that you know what to pay attention to when working on your English, you will achieve good results and your Russian will not interfere with your English.

Read more about the problems of learning English and how to solve them on the So-Easy conversation club website!

Reading. Sometimes it becomes surprising why the Latin language has become dead, and not English. Whether business to read everyones de facto or memento mori. How it is written is how it is heard. The situation is quite different in English. For each vowel, there are about 7 reading rules and the same number of exceptions. What do you want? These are the islanders and their peculiarities of national reading. Even if four Englishmen are shown some new English word, each of them will read it in his own way. For in this language there are no rules for reading, only exceptions (as my student said).

This is how you learn, you learn i read in open syllable as [ah](for example, wife, like, price), and then you want to go skiing with an English friend in thin snow and invite him " Lec sky". Try to prove later that you don't need a balloon to fly through the sky. And all because ski is the exception that is read [ski]. As well as visa,give,minute (on this unfortunate word in general, as soon as the Russians with their associations do not refine themselves).

And at the same time (continuing the theme with the letter i) the word live can be read in two ways: [live], [live]. In the Russian understanding, this is beyond all understanding. However, the point is that Liv- it's just to live, but live- alive. That's it: just different parts of speech.

The tendency of the British to designate one sound with an insane number of letters is also their sweet national feature, which must be put up with. Indeed, why write f when to use ph. Now you can understand the Americans who turn night into nite and labor into labor.

Is it possible for mere mortals to learn all the rules? I can assure you that it is not available even for the British themselves. The only way out is to use transcription in the dictionary more often, communicate a lot in English and gradually accumulate baggage. One fine day you will notice that reading some words you already feel intuitively. If this happened - congratulations, the British are doing the same.

Verb tenses. The dream of English learners: the number of tenses of verbs is equal to the number of seasons. Basically, it is. If you multiply this number by 3. There are 12 basic tenses in English. And besides them, there are all sorts of mysterious Future-in-the-Past (the future is in the past). After such a joke by Zadornov about our untranslatable Russian turnover, “Old New Year” seems like baby talk. A little note: if you are a beginner, then for now, use the Scarlet O'Hara method: "I will not think about mysterious times now, I will think about tomorrow."

Strictly speaking, you probably believe that there are only three tenses in Russian, don't you? Was, is and will be - a total of three (past, present and future). Now think again and try to explain to the Englishman "went", "went" and " came". What is the difference? All three verbs are in the past tense. However, the first verb is the simple past, the second is the continuous past, and the third is the perfect past. Hooray! It's the same in English!

Compared to reading, there is some logic in the tenses of English verbs. Past (Past), present (Present) and future (Future) - three strong points, as in Russian. Each of these times can be simple (Simple), long (Continuous), perfect (Perfect) and perfect long (Perfect Continuous). You can determine which one to use using marker adverbs: for example, for Past Simple, such a signal beacon will be ago, last week; for Present Perfect - never, ever. And then - Murphy's textbook in your hands and go ahead to do the exercises. In addition, do not forget to learn how "Our Father" is a table of irregular verbs, and you will have complete verbal-temporal happiness.

Articles. Everything is fine here. Thanks to the British for not inventing feminine and masculine articles, as in some other languages. You just need to distinguish between the definite article and the indefinite.

To do this, it is useful to remember that the article "a" appeared from the numeral "one (one)". And the article "the" is a variation of "this" or that (that one). In general, digging into the past is very useful. Articles did not appear out of nothingness. It was just inconvenient to say one letter, one boy, etc. every time. In colloquial speech one" quickly shortened to " a". And so the article arose, disturbing the minds of poor English learners. Same with "the". In colloquial speech that and this gradually turned into a capacious the. Accordingly, every time you can replace the article with a numeral one- used a. When can you replace it with a demonstrative pronoun? that or this, used the.

Example: you are sitting in a restaurant and want to drink a glass of wine to recover from reading English words. You can gently hint to your date that you want to skip one glass of wine (I want a glass of wine). Or you can brazenly declare that you want exactly the glass of wine that he now holds in his hand (I want the glass of wine!). It all depends on your upbringing.

Irregular Verbs. Yes, in fact, it would be strange to expect that the British would make life easier for themselves by subordinating everything to certain rules. It's so interesting when the most commonly used English verbs do not have a simple -ed ending. It's easier to confuse a foreign guest. Let him try to guess what went- it's actually go in past tense and ate- this is eat. Any student can remember the hated tables with irregular verbs. Alas, the only way out is to learn the list. In total - 270 verbs. Now there will be something to do at your leisure. One verb a day - a year has already passed.

Laziness. Get to know the main difficulty in learning English. In fact, there is nothing difficult, except for the peculiarities of reading, in English. Someone complains that, they say, there are too many pretexts. Yes? Read Shakespeare in your free time, underlining prepositions with a pencil. Then do the same with Pushkin's works. The next item will be the phrase you wrote down in your diary: “The day counted the number of prepositions in Shakespeare. For a week I counted the number of prepositions in Pushkin. I thought a lot. I decided to choose English as my native language.

In general, the English language, indeed, has a fairly harmonious grammatical system. Trying to find something complicated in it, the foreigners decided to focus on tenses and irregular verbs. In fact, there must be something to complain about.

I remember the same our partner from Great Britain. When I first spoke with him, at the end of the negotiations he gently asked: “Why so complicated?” My teacher would have heard how our British colleagues communicate. Yes, she would have put a deuce a long time ago. And they like it. For example, while you at the airport will display the phrase “Could you tell me please where the bus station is?” with horror in your eyes, the Englishman will have time to drink a cup of tea, check the clock with Big Ben and, having smoked a pipe, throw “there”. You will be treated with more sympathy if you simply say, “Bus? Where? Be sure: you will be escorted to the very stop.

Hence the moral: everything ingenious is simple. In this sense, English is ahead of many other European languages. Do not be lazy, communicate, read, study, sign up for English courses in the end - and you won't have to do haymaking.

specially for the portal

There is an opinion that English is a very simple language and it is not difficult to master it. Probably, if this were true, then, even with all the disadvantages of Russian education, many would have mastered the language. But it's not. A very small percentage of people, graduating from school, and sometimes university, master English, at least at a basic level. And there are many reasons for this. Let's try to consider the main ones:

The ambiguity of the teaching system

There are a great many methods of learning English, as well as words in it, moreover, new methods appear every year. However, upon closer examination, you realize that they are all similar to each other or basically have a similar idea. The main methods of language learning can be divided into 2 groups - classical and communicative. The communicative method looks more interesting, but often our respected teachers do not miss the opportunity to add something from the classical language learning course to it. Namely, grammar. Of the minuses of the communicative system, it is worth noting the need to know the elementary rules of grammar. What about the classical teaching system - its main drawback is a huge number of boring rules, coupled with a significant lack of speaking practice.

Serious differences in the grammar of Russian and English

Russian grammar, and especially punctuation, is considered one of the most difficult in the world. But for native speakers it is not difficult to master it, it happens by itself. As for the grammar of the English language, here, first of all, there are differences due to the philosophy of the language. The main problems in mastering grammar arise with tenses, verbs, prepositions and articles.

There are as many as 12 tenses in English, against 3 in Russian, but we always use different particles and additional words to clarify the meaning. - For example "What are you doing now?" and "What are you even doing?". In English, there is a time for each case. - For example "What do you do?" and "What are you doing?".

As for verbs, this is the main wealth of the English language. There are many, many verbs. But the worst thing is not the quantity, but the fact that there are irregular verbs whose forms you have to learn, and verbs like "set", "get" and "way" that have many different meanings. For example, the verb “set” has 44 of them. And if you want to master spoken English at a good level, you will also have to remember phrasal verbs, of which there are many.

Next on the list are prepositions and articles. As for prepositions - nothing complicated, just some of them do not coincide with the use of prepositions in Russian. Phrasal verbs are also formed in conjunction with prepositions. But with articles it is more difficult. They simply do not exist in Russian, which means that we simply have nothing to compare with, find differences, etc. You will have to come to terms with this and master the rules for using articles, which is not so difficult to do. By the way, you will be forgiven for any mistake related to the use of articles, since some of the subtleties of their use are almost incomprehensible to a foreigner.

Imbalance of theory and practice in teaching.

For some reason, teachers in our general education schools put too much emphasis on the grammatical component. On the colloquial part remains 15 percent, at best. Dry grammar is boring, and with an insufficient number of examples, it is also incomprehensible. Schoolchildren have 2 ways - to cram or write off from somewhere. In universities, this situation is also not new. As a result, people who have spent an average of 10 to 15 years studying English cannot speak it.

We were all once small children and also mastered our native language. Without any rules, they just learned from adults, repeated, invented, experimented, etc. As a result, at the age of 6-7 years, having come to school, we could freely communicate without knowing any (well, almost any) rules. With English, it’s the other way around – we are first bombarded with grammar, and only then, maybe, we will start talking. No wonder we have a very high percentage of people who cannot overcome the language barrier.

All this sounds very frightening, but you should not be afraid. All the difficulties that we have considered are very easy to get around. To achieve a result, so that learning English is interesting and exciting, you need only 2 components:

1. Your desire and desire to master the language. Good motivation has never hurt anyone, set a goal and go for it.

2. Suitable teacher. If you are good with grammar, focus on practice. If you need to improve your grammar as well, find the right teacher who can give you the best combination of theory and practice.

Learn the language and enjoy your progress!